R&D AI & Insights Director

Acadia Pharmaceuticals; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 192,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

Bonus and equity packages

New hire and ongoing equity

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Job summary

Acadia Pharmaceuticals is seeking a Director, R&D AI, Insights & Analytics to lead data, analytics, AI, and insights across the R&D organization. This high-visibility role shapes how data drives clinical development, governance, and decision-making with measurable business value.

You will partner with R&D leadership, Enterprise AI, and external partners to define roadmaps, modernize data platforms, and deliver scalable, data-driven solutions across the drug development lifecycle.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field; advanced degree preferred.
• 10+ years of experience in R&D analytics, data strategy, AI-enabled solutions, or related disciplines.
• Experience within the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or life sciences industry.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the R&D insights, analytics, AI, and data capability roadmap aligned with priorities.
• Lead the R&D data governance framework across data ownership, stewardship, ontology, and quality standards.
• Develop dashboards, predictive analytics, and decision-support capabilities for trial optimization and portfolio oversight.
• Partner with Enterprise IT and data engineering to design modern R&D data platforms (data lake, lakehouse, cloud-based).
• Translate use cases into scalable products, defining success metrics and deployment plans.

Skills

R&D analytics

AI/ML

Data governance

Stakeholder engagement

Cross-functional collaboration

Cloud data platforms

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Life Sciences, or related field

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

Databricks

Snowflake

Microsoft Fabric

AWS

Azure

Job description

Acadia Pharmaceuticals is seeking a Director, R&D AI, Insights & Analytics to lead data, analytics, AI, and insights across the R&D organization. This high-visibility role shapes how data drives clinical development, governance, and decision-making with measurable business value.

You will partner with R&D leadership, Enterprise AI, and external partners to define roadmaps, modernize data platforms, and deliver scalable, data-driven solutions across the drug development lifecycle.